


Mercy

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Court Sorcerer Merlin, Dark Merlin, M/M, Mercy Killing, Wild Merlin, king arthur - Freeform, legal magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-08-23 16:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16622378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Merlin doesn’t stop though, never stops. Arthur cannot bring himself to chain down broad shoulders the way he should; the way his council begs him too. He has seen the callous way Merlin disposes of silent enemies, traitors friends, dissenting councilmen.





	Mercy

It frightens Arthur, the casualness with which Merlin moves. A single hand splayed, eyes alight, and a fourth of the army falls. Arthur can no longer contain the force he has unleashed on the world.

He thinks it wrong, the heat in him when he sees the aftermath. Bodies broken and splayed across Camelot’s fields. Most of them torn by forces they hadn’t seen coming, by a night they had no chance of stopping.

Sometimes, when Arthur holds sharp angles and soft hair, he thinks of how fragile the bones that level enemy forces are. How gently they fit into his hands, how purple they bruise under his fingers.

“I’m sorry.” He says it again and again, beneath sheets and astride horses. “Please, no more,” he screams as sword after sword is melted over the gravestones.

Merlin doesn’t stop though, never stops. Arthur cannot bring himself to chain down broad shoulders the way he should; the way his council begs him too. He has seen the callous way Merlin disposes of silent enemies, traitors friends, dissenting councilmen.

Arthur himself has been on the end of that cruel stare, has felt the fire coil in his gut at an embrace that holds too tight.

He will not build the pyre though; will not be the one to set flames on a boy who defied him. Will not watch the flesh curl off the man who defends him.

He has seen the way Merlin loses his stomach after a battle, heard him sob as he picks through the corpses of men who were just boys. He has spied on the way Merlin bathes, long hours scrubbing his skin until he bleeds, scrubbing until the blood is only his own.

Arthur is kind to him on those nights. Gentle caresses and smooth thrusts. He whispers “I love you,” and he isn’t lying.

He kills him on soft night. When Merlin’s eyes are dead, long before Arthur feeds him too much sleep. He kills him, for the children left beneath the rubble, kills him for the knight that was a brother Merlin was jealous of.

He kills him for a wife who shakes at the rage in Merlin’s voice, and a sister crushed beneath his strong hands. Kills him, because Camelot’s borders cannot extends much farther, because Arthur can’t stand the weight of the souls hanging in his chest, crowding in his heart.

He doesn’t whisper, when he stands beneath a vengeful stone angel. Just touches his fingers to the wings and declares “I always will.”

 


End file.
